


is love alive

by 152glasslippers



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: (if you squint), Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Christmas Presents, F/M, Kastle Christmas Secret Santa Gift Exchange, Kastlechristmas, Leo Lieberman #1 shipper, POV Alternating, Post-Daredevil s3, Pre-Relationship, Sarah and Karen are BFFs, Sharing a Bed, kastlechristmas2k18
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-01 19:01:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17249654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/152glasslippers/pseuds/152glasslippers
Summary: “You just…” she started. “You don’t have to spend it alone.”Because she knew he would. She knew that Curtis still had family, family who couldn’t know Frank was alive, and that David would be gone, but even if neither of those things were true, that he’d still spend it alone anyway. That he wouldn’t want to impose his baggage on anyone else. It wasn’t an easy day.“You can spend it with me,” she finished delicately.But it wasn’t an easy day for her, either. He knew that, too.Post-Daredevil season 3. Karen invites Frank over for Christmas. Fluff, pining, and gift giving ensues.





	is love alive

**Author's Note:**

> For @mapleymood for the Kastle Christmas secret Santa gift exchange! Thank you for waiting for your gift—I hope you love it! Merry (belated) Christmas, and happy new year! xx
> 
> [For the purposes of this fic, DD s3 took place around March (there was snow melting in some shots??) and it’s been a year since the events of TP s1.]

_November 27_

He called while she was standing in her office, contemplating the enormous number of files she’d amassed in the last eight months. The filing system she’d haphazardly pieced together—an assortment of empty copy paper boxes and plastic milk crates—since Nelson, Murdock & Page took off wasn’t going to cut it anymore.

Over half a year later, and the space still felt new.

She barely registered her phone ringing, picking it up off her desk absentmindedly, sliding her thumb across the screen to accept the call without looking to see who it was.

“Karen Page.”

“Bad time?”

The timbre of Frank’s voice washed over her. She felt the warmth of it from her scalp to her toes, a wave of relief easing the tension in her shoulders and the tightness in her calves, relaxing her whole body as she sank against her desk.

“No. Hi.” She never used his name on the phone, wasn’t worth the risk. There was no knowing who might be listening, and in the year since he’d gotten his new identity, she’d never once called him Pete. Nor did she ever intend to.

Whatever it was, this thing between them, whatever she had with Frank, she didn’t want any part of it not to be real.

“You okay?” He always asked this, no matter how long it’d been since he’d last seen her. An hour, a day, a week. Ever since Fisk.

“Yeah, I’m okay. Are you?”

She always asked it back.

“I’m fine, Karen.” She could hear the wry smile in his voice. “What are you doing Sunday night? You got plans?”

“No.” Outside of work, she rarely ever had plans—that much hadn’t changed since Matt came back from the dead, since she started working with Matt and Foggy again—unless they were with Frank. “You have something in mind?”

“It’s the first night of Hanukkah. We’ve got an invite from David and Sarah and the kids.”

She tried to ignore the way her heart tripped over the word “we.”

“Should I bring anything? Gifts for the kids?”

“Nah, they’re skipping gifts this year, taking the kids down to Orlando while they’re off from school.”

“Okay.”

“It’s kind of an early thing, yeah? Pick you up around 4?”

“Sure.”

They fell quiet then, and Karen knew she should say goodbye and hang up, that this was all Frank had called to talk to her about, but she couldn’t make herself do it. She hadn’t seen him in over a week, and it was far from the longest they’d ever been apart—laughably so—but she missed him. Frank had been with the Liebermans for Thanksgiving—apparently, he’d owed David for missing it last year—and she’d spent the day with Matt, Foggy, and Marci, but her thoughts had kept chasing after Frank, wondering if being with another family was better than being alone, or worse.

She’d never been able to decide.

She was in the middle of convincing herself that another five days without seeing him wouldn’t kill her, that even if she was used to seeing him once, twice a week now, she’d done it before and she could do it again, when Frank said, “See you before then?” and surprised a laugh out of her. Light, airy. A sound she only ever seemed to make around him.

“Friday night?” he asked. “I’ll bring dinner?”

“See you then.” She could hear the smile in her own voice now.

“Take care, Karen.”

He hung up then, before she could say anything else, and when Matt and Foggy came in to her office ten minutes later, she was still sitting on her desk, still clutching her phone, still smiling.

 

_December 2_

“What are you doing for Christmas?”

Her back was to him, unlocking the door to her apartment after Hanukkah at the Liebermans’. There’d been a few months when he’d left her at the door to her building whenever they parted ways, but that was before Fisk. Now he didn’t leave her anywhere but her apartment, with the door locked behind him.

She left the door open as she moved into the apartment, an unspoken invitation, and Frank followed her inside, caught off guard by the question.

“I’m, uh, working at the soup kitchen with Curt and some of the guys from group on Christmas Eve.”

He headed straight for the kitchen, unloading the bag of leftover latkes and _sufganiyot_ from Sarah. A lamp flicked on behind him, and when he turned around, Karen was leaning against the back of the sofa, watching him. She’d slipped out of her shoes, her heels abandoned unceremoniously on the floor next to her.

“What about Christmas day?”

“You about to make an offer, Karen?” he asked flippantly. He didn’t know how to have this conversation with her. Didn’t know why she’d be asking unless she planned to invite him, didn’t know what an invite meant. “Murdock and Nelson busy or something?”

Karen rolled her eyes, pushed off the back of the couch and walked past him, further into the kitchen.

“You’re not a consolation prize, Frank. I have no idea what their plans are.”

She pulled the bag of leftovers toward her, disappeared behind the door to the fridge to put them away. When she reappeared, their eyes met.

Her gaze was a physical thing, pinning him in place. It always had been. It grounded him, knocked the wind out of him, held them together when he should have left her alone. He’d never been able to shake the feeling of it.

He didn’t know how much longer he could resist it.

“You just…” she started. “You don’t have to spend it alone.”

Because she knew he would. She knew that Curtis still had family, family who couldn’t know Frank was alive, and that David would be gone, but even if neither of those things were true, that he’d still spend it alone anyway. That he wouldn’t want to impose his baggage on anyone else. It wasn’t an easy day.

“You can spend it with me,” she finished delicately.

But it wasn’t an easy day for her, either. He knew that, too.

They fell quiet. Karen flushed in the silence and dropped her eyes to the floor, tucking her hair behind her ear.

“You don’t—have to decide right now. The offer’s…there.”

This was dangerous territory. To give himself something he wanted on a day when it would mean something. To admit how badly he wanted it.

“Yes.”

She lifted her head to look at him again.

“Yes,” he repeated.

“Okay,” she whispered, almost smiling, and he answered it back.

“Okay.”

They watched each other for another minute but he cut it short before the weight of everything he wasn’t saying could crush them both.

“It’s getting late. I should go.”

She nodded, and he trailed after her through the apartment. She opened the door and moved out of the way, holding it open for him.

“Thank you for bringing me tonight.”

She smiled, and he crossed into her space, kissing her on the cheek.

“I’ll call you.”

“Be careful.” She always said it, even though he hadn’t fired a gun outside of a shooting range in over a year. Even though the most dangerous thing he did was work construction, and that just to keep his hands busy.

“You, too.”

When he got back to his car, he could still smell her perfume.

 

_December 14_

A week later, reality set in. And five days after that, panic.

She called Sarah on Friday.

“Hey, Karen.”

“Hey. Is David home?”

She didn’t need an audience for this. Especially one that might get back to Frank.

“No, he took Zach out for a movie night; Leo and I are having a girls’ night in.” There was a slight pause, like Sarah was reconsidering Karen’s question, and when she spoke again, her tone was serious. “Why? Is everything okay? Do you need to talk to him?”

“No. I’m fine. I…” She sighed, dropped her forehead into her hand. “I did something stupid.”

“Oh.” A beat, and Sarah seemed to catch on. “ _Oh_.” Another pause. “I’ll open a bottle of wine.”

Karen grabbed her car keys off the counter.

“I’m on my way.”

When she knocked on the Liebermans’ front door less than an hour later, Sarah answered it with a glass of white, holding it out to Karen before she’d even crossed the threshold.

Karen took it and walked in, didn’t even bother saying hello. “I invited Frank over for Christmas.”

Sarah shut the door after her, opened her mouth and took a breath like she was going to say something, then didn’t.

“I’ll get the rest of the bottle,” she said finally.

Karen nodded, downing half the glass before setting it down on the coffee table and shrugging out of her coat. Leo was sitting at the table in the dining room, reading. Or, she had been.

“Hey, Leo,” she said, toeing out of her boots.

“Hi.”

“Sorry for crashing girls’ night.”

Leo shrugged a little. “It’s okay. I don’t mind.”

Sarah walked back into the living room, bottle of wine in hand, pouring another glass for herself.

“Inviting him for Christmas.” She blew out a breath, sat down on the couch next to Karen. “That’s big. That’s big when the man in question isn’t Frank Castle.”

“I didn’t even think about it. He dropped me off after we got back from your place, and I just thought, ‘I don’t want him to be alone on Christmas. I want him to spend it with me.’” She pushed her hand into her hair, looked at Sarah. “What if he felt forced into it?”

“Karen. You think Frank has ever let anyone force him into doing anything?”

“No, but what if it was out of, of pity? Or obligation? He felt bad saying no, felt like he had to say yes.”

“Frank doesn’t pity you. He cares about you.” Sarah studied her thoughtfully. “Maybe it’s not a big deal.”

“Holidays are a big enough deal when you’re already in a relationship. And Frank and I are…not.”

“You might as well be.”

They stared at each other for a minute. It was a conversation they’d had before. She could feel Leo watching them from the dining room, well within hearing distance.

“I need more wine.” She reached for her glass.

“Look, I know it’s not…what it’s not. But you’re committed to each other. You have been as long as I’ve known you.” Karen opened her mouth to argue and Sarah held up a finger. “Maybe it’s unorthodox. Maybe it’s not what other people mean when they say commitment, but Karen. Come on.” Sarah leveled her with a look. “The things you’ve done for each other. And I know you haven’t even told me the half of it.”

“What if it’s too much?” she whispered. This was what it always came down to. “I don’t want to push him. His family’s dead, Sarah.”

“But he’s not,” she said gently. “And you aren’t, either.”

Karen took a deep breath, sank further into the couch cushions.

“So he comes over for Christmas, and then what? Then what do we do?”

“You do whatever it is the two of you do when you’re alone.”

Karen rolled her head to glare at Sarah, who was sitting with her elbow propped against the back of the couch, her eyebrows raised suggestively.

“Funny,” Karen said, voice flat, and Sarah started laughing. “I mean, do I get him a present? What the hell do I even get Frank?”

Sarah opened her mouth, most likely to say something inappropriate, but Karen cut her off. “Don’t.” Sarah laughed even harder.

“I have an idea.” Leo’s voice was barely audible, but it brought Sarah’s laughter up short. They both turned to look at her. Her book was lying untouched on the table in front of her. “About what to get Pete.” Leo and Zach still called him Pete. It was easier that way. “I could show you. Upstairs.”

Karen glanced at Sarah, who shrugged, nodded.

“Sure,” Karen said, surprise making her voice soft.

She followed Leo upstairs to the office, where they sat down at the air-gapped computer she knew David had bought after he’d been cleared by Homeland. All of the family’s personal files were on it, including, apparently, Leo’s photos.

Leo had been an avid photographer ever since Karen had met her, but according to Sarah, it was a new hobby she’d picked up after David’s return. Karen had never questioned it; she only had a few pictures left of Kevin and her mother.

Leo opened a folder that seemed to be all from the cookout David and Sarah had thrown in August. It was a small group, just the family plus Karen and Frank and Curtis. Leo started scrolling through the photos, searching for a particular one. She found it quickly, like she spent a lot of time looking through these pictures, and opened it.

Karen couldn’t help her sharp intake of breath when she saw it.

It was a picture of her and Frank. They were standing close, turned toward each other. Her mouth was open wide in a smile, her skin pink, her hair falling loosely over one shoulder. She was laughing at something he said, her eyes on his, and he was looking right back at her. His smile was smaller, that crooked, almost shy smile she loved so much. There was no one else in the frame; clearly Leo had caught them alone.

“I can print it for you,” she offered.

Karen swallowed against the burning in her chest. She felt lightheaded.

So this is what they looked like to other people.

“Can I see the rest of them?” she asked faintly.

They clicked through the rest of the album together, shots of Frank and David cooking, Karen and Sarah in the kitchen, Curtis and Zach playing football. Selfies of Zach and Leo, Karen and Leo. David and Sarah kissing, Zach photo bombing with his tongue out, Frank and Curtis hugging, a family photo of the four Liebermans. The picnic table they’d set up in the backyard, the flowers in the back garden, the sunset over the garage.

“Wait.”

She stopped Leo on a picture that was so starkly different from the man she’d met chained to a hospital bed—from the man who’d stubbornly refused to admit he was lonely; from the countless times she’d him him bruised, bloody, and beaten—it was breathtaking.

It was everything she’d wanted for him.

“That’s the one,” she told her.

Leo nodded, got up to put photo paper in the printer. “It’ll take a minute,” she said. “I can bring it downstairs when it’s dry.”

“Thank you.”

Leo shrugged. “It’s Dad’s rule. No printing pictures of Pete outside the house.”

David was as fiercely protective of Frank as she was.

Karen smiled. “Still.”

She stood up to leave, headed for the door, but Leo’s voice stopped her.

“Karen?” She turned back around. “I know I’m only thirteen, and it’s none of my business, but…” She hesitated. “I think Pete loves you.”

Karen froze, shock making her forget how to breathe. But Leo wasn’t done.

“And I think you love him, too. So maybe just…tell him.”

In that moment, she wanted nothing more than for it to be that simple.

“Thank you for the picture,” she said. “It’s perfect.”

When she got home that night and opened the envelope Leo had given her, there was a second picture in there, the one of her and Frank.

Then again, maybe it was.

 

_December 25_

He hadn’t seen it when he first walked in.

He’d been too preoccupied with Karen’s smile when she opened the door, with the red of her sweater and the way her hair stood out against it. With the way she said ‘Merry Christmas’ and the smell of whatever she’d made for breakfast. With dropping his bag next to the couch and hiding the gift he’d brought in it.

He didn’t notice it until they’d finished cleaning up after breakfast and they were sitting next to each other on the couch, each of them with a mug of coffee in hand. She tilted her head toward it as they sat down.

“That’s for you.”

Frank glanced from the present back to Karen and she nodded. He set his coffee down next to it and picked it up. It was no larger than a hardcover book, but thinner. There was a bow stuck to the center of it and a tag underneath.

_Proof that “after” exists. xx Karen_

He paused after reading it, swallowed hard, and tore it open.

It was a 5x7 frame with a picture he’d never seen before. From the end-of-summer barbecue David and Sarah had thrown before the kids went back to school. He was standing with David and Curtis, just the three of them, David’s arms thrown wide, gesticulating wildly, Curtis’s head thrown back, his eyes squeezed shut with laughter. Frank was holding a beer to his lips, mouth twisted like he was trying not to smile. He vaguely remembered the moment it was taken, busting David’s balls for whatever crazy shit he’d just said.

“This one of Leo’s?” he asked quietly.

“Yes.”

Karen didn’t say anything else, just watched him silently, patiently, like she wanted to let him have this moment.

He knew Leo had started taking pictures, that he must have been in them, but he’d never asked to see them. Maybe because he knew it would be exactly what Karen said, proof of his new life, and he’d been afraid that seeing it in photographs would somehow let him down and it’d become proof of something else instead: That his new life would never be enough, that it would never compare to his old one.

He’d had no idea how badly he’d needed to see a picture of it until now. A picture of his brothers. The brother he’d managed to carry with him from before his life was shot to hell, and the one that he’d found on the other side of the shitstorm.

From the woman he’d met while he was in the middle of it.

“Thank you, Karen.” And when he looked up at her, she smiled softly, a little sad, and he knew she understood how much he meant it.

He set the frame back down in front of him, facing them. He looked at it for another second before reaching over the arm of the couch into his bag. “I uh, got something for you, too.” He pulled out the album Leo and Zach had helped him pick out and set it in her lap. “Didn’t wrap it,” he said sheepishly.

Karen looked up from the black cover, the _like I care_ in her eyes easily translated.

She opened it and stilled at the first page, at the “What It Means to Be a Hero” headline. She looked up at him again, eyes wide, but he didn’t say anything. She turned the page, then another, and another. Page after page, byline after byline, cut and pasted in neat columns.

“Frank…” she started, but that was it. He watched her closely, trying to gauge her reaction. Her speechlessness was starting to make him nervous.

“I know you’ve got a new job, that you’re with Nelson and Murdock now, but you were one hell of a reporter, Karen. You deserve to remember that, be proud of it.”

“Frank,” she said again. She was still turning pages. “This is every article I’ve ever written.”

He huffed a laugh to cover his embarrassment, tried to pass it off as amusement at her reaction.

“Yeah.”

She stopped turning pages to look at him.

“How do you have all this?”

“I’d been saving them. Kept them through all the…” He waved his hand in a gesture he hoped she understood to mean the mess with Rawlins and Homeland and Russo.

“Why?” she whispered.

He looked down at the pages.

“It was a way to feel close to you, yeah? Keep an eye on you.”

He didn’t see her move toward him, just felt her arms wrap around his shoulders, the corner of the album digging into his thigh as she closed the distance between them.

They hadn’t hugged yet this morning, and he realized he’d missed it, the way she felt against him, the way he fit against her. He pressed his face into her hair and she hauled herself even closer. She turned her head and her lips brushed against his ear.

“Thank you, Frank.”

He held her tighter.

She pulled back after another minute but stayed close, one hand resting on his thigh, her other hand readjusting the album in her lap, tracing the edges of the clippings.

“Do you mind if I just…look at this awhile?” she asked quietly.

He pushed her hair back over her shoulder, his thumb barely brushing her cheek. “No.”

He let his arm fall to the back of the couch behind her, and Karen leaned back next to him, only a few inches between them, the ends of her hair landing on his sleeve, and Frank was content just to watch her, to catalogue the awe and reverence on her face knowing that he put it there.

\---

Frank was asleep on the couch next to her, his chin resting on his chest. His gift lay half-forgotten in her lap, her articles much less interesting than the sight of Frank sleeping.

He looked peaceful in sleep, and it dawned on her sadly that she was relieved. That when she’d imagined it, which was more often than she wanted to admit, she’d always worried that he couldn’t sleep for long, only managed to grab stolen moments of rest between an endless rotation of nightmares.

But maybe that was just her.

She’d also imagined nights where neither of them slept at all, for entirely different reasons.

Her face warmed at the thought, and Karen stood up slowly, carefully, before watching Frank sleep became something like torture.

She left the album on the coffee table next to the picture she’d given him and wandered into the kitchen, started pulling flour and sugar from the cabinets, butter from the fridge, without really thinking about it, something about Frank’s presence soothing enough that she didn’t feel scared of the past.

Frank woke up just after she’d pulled the second tray of cookies from the oven. She froze where she was, standing behind the kitchen island, as he lifted his head abruptly, looking around frantically. She thought for a second that he’d forgotten where he was, but then his eyes finally landed on her and he visibly relaxed, and she realized he’d been looking for her.

It was hard to speak around the lump in her throat.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” His voice was rougher than usual from sleep. It traveled through her body like an electric shock.

He got up from the couch, running a hand over his hair.

“Sorry about that.” He wasn’t quite looking at her, and his cheeks looked a little pink, although she supposed that could have been from sleep.

“Don’t be,” Karen said softly and went back to rolling out the dough to avoid staring.

Frank leaned against the counter across from her. “Gingerbread?”

“They were Kevin’s favorite.”

“Lisa’s, too.”

She looked up at him and his eyes on hers were so open, so unguarded that she asked the question she’d spent the last three weeks telling herself she wouldn’t.

“Where were you on Christmas last year, Frank?”

He hadn’t shown up again until a few weeks after the new year, nearly two months after the hotel. She knew he hadn’t wanted to burden her, that he’d wanted to get his shit together at least a little before he reinserted himself into her life, and maybe he’d thought he would have ruined her holiday, but in truth, she’d spent the whole month of December wishing that Christmas would bring him to her, even if it was just to let her know he was safe.

It was foolish, a little girl’s wish, but she’d wished for the same thing at midnight on New Year’s. That one, she guessed, had come true; it’d just taken a few weeks.

“The cemetery, for most of the day. Then Curt showed up at my door with David and a couple of six packs, saying he’d already told me once not to be a wallowing asshole,” Frank said with a smirk.

Karen laughed, then felt her stomach drop out.

“Frank, if you wanted to be with them today, you didn’t have to…” But he shook his head, and she trailed off.

“I was there yesterday,” he said simply. “What about you, huh? What Christmas traditions am I getting in the way of?”

_Getting drunk. Almost calling my dad. Crying over you._

“I spent Christmas morning with Doris.”

“And then?”

“And then I was here.” She left it at that, and Frank didn’t push. They both knew what she meant.

“So poor Mrs. Urich got the boot, huh?” he asked a second later, playful, but she could see the concern in his eyes, that by being here he’d made someone else spend Christmas alone.

“No. We had dinner last night.” She finished rolling out the last of the dough, set aside the rolling pin. “You’re not getting in the way, Frank.”

His eyes were serious when he answered.

“Wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be, Karen.”

He held her gaze until she nodded.

Frank grabbed a cookie off the cooling rack, and she went back to the dough, pressing a cookie cutter into it. She pretended not to watch as he popped the whole cookie in his mouth.

“Well?”

“Good.”

“Good.” She tossed another cookie cutter at him, and he caught it with a laugh. “Then make yourself useful.”

\---

It wasn’t the Christmas Frank would have imagined for himself a year ago, six months ago. It wasn’t the Christmas he’d planned on before Karen asked him three weeks ago, and it wasn’t the Christmas he’d expected when he knocked on her door that morning.

If he was being totally honest, he hadn’t really known what to expect, but it wasn’t this.

Karen licking icing from her fingers and laughing at the flour handprint she left on his shirt. Squeezing past each other in the small space while they cooked dinner, sharing stories of their best Christmases as kids, the worst relatives they had to spend time with. Eating dinner on her couch, talking through the Grinch and Charlie Brown. Cleaning up her kitchen for the second time that day, the sound of Karen humming along to Christmas songs on the radio. The soft glow of her single strand of multicolored twinkle lights when they turned off the rest of the lights and tuned the TV to a local station playing _Miracle on 34 th Street_ in the original black and white. Karen’s feet tucked under his thigh while she slept through the second half.

It was almost midnight when the credits started to roll. He reached for the remote and turned the TV off, left the string of lights on and bent over Karen, picked her up, arms around her back, under knees, and carried her into her bedroom. She turned her face into his chest, and his heart beat a little faster.

“What time is it?” she mumbled as he lay her on the bed. Her eyes were still closed.

“Late.”

“I missed the end of the movie.”

He laughed softly. “I’ll tell you what happened later.”

He pulled the blankets up over her, stood there until he was able to ignore the ache in his chest and force himself to go.

This time, without Karen in his arms, when he passed her dresser he saw it: another picture from that same day in August, this one of the two of them, the glossy finish reflecting the yellow light from the streetlight outside her window.

It stopped him dead in his tracks. He stared at it, unmoving, so long that when Karen spoke again, it startled him.

“Do you ever think about staying?”

Her voice was soft, and when he turned to look at her, she was sitting up in bed, watching him.

“I think about it every time you go. Every night you leave.” She closed her eyes again, and in the dim light, he caught her pained expression. “And every morning I wake up, and I miss you. I wake up, and I think, ‘I wish Frank were here.’”

She opened her eyes and looked right at him. His blood pounded, his entire body wound tight, waiting on the edge of a knife for whatever she was going to say next.

“Stay,” she whispered. “Please.”

He knew what she was really asking, what it would mean if he stayed. They both did.

Frank glanced at the picture again. It was so plain on their faces. He was in love with her, and she loved him back.

He stayed.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
